It's Public Domain Day! Get ready for lots of slasher flicks starring Flip the Frog!

Move over, 2025! Here comes the Year of the Horse!

 

I've Seen Enough Anime To Know Where This Is Going

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Arion

Arion is an anime movie from 1986 based on the manga Neo Heroic Fantasia: Arion by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko who is the legendary animation director behind the original Gundam anime. Aside from Venus Wars, very few of his manga work have been adapted into an anime. Arion was one of the earliest anime based on Greek mythology, although it took several liberties with the original source material, the biggest being that the title character was supposed to be a horse instead of a teenage boy. The film has been hidden from most western otaku as it only recently got an English release through Discotek, so up until then American anime fans would've normally only seen this movie in fansubs. This was not just another fantasy take on the Greek pantheon but a full-fledged epic with huge battles that probably borrowed helped inspire directors like Peter Jackson and Wolfgang Petersen. A true Joeph Cambell hero's journey animated by Sunrise who traditionally specializes in the mecha anime.

Way off in the past in the land of Thrace, the boy Arion is a demigod living with his blind mother Demeter who the titan Hades kidnaps and tricks him into believing his brother Zeus is the one responsible for Demeter's blindness. After years of training in the underworld, Arion heads out to find Zeus who is constantly warring with his other brother Poseidon for control over the land and sea. Arion comes across Poseidon, who he understands to be his father after attacking his mother long ago and witnesses a battle between his forces and Zeus' led by his daughter Athena. After the battle, Arion slays Hades who curses him with madness which causes him to kill Poseidon as well, all while being helped by the lovely mute who turns out to be his twin sister. Our hero's past is truly revealed to him as being the son of the outcasted titan Prometheus and his human wife Pandora. Arion assembles an army to conquer the powers of Olympus as Zeus cowers behind the powers of the Furies and the Earth goddess Gaea. There is a gigantic climax with ogres, kaiju, and divine laser cannons as Arion tries to rescue his sister from the true dark power behind the throne.

Arion is a grand sprawling anime with stellar battle scenes. There are spectacular throwbacks to Homer's Odyssey with some different takes on historical figures like Hercules reimagined as a reformed thug, so this movie will defy your expectations for a Japanese take on the sword-and-sandal genre. The plot does condense a great deal of the world building into a single film 118-minute-long movie, despite how certain aspects of incest among the Greek gods doesn't seem to affect the storytelling. The Hellenic culture blends with high fantasy to make for a lost anime classic. By the way, there is a post-credits scene where Arion finally lives up to his true Greek heritage.

Happy A.I. Holidays!

 

ANI-MOVIES, *The Mitchells Vs. The Machines

The Mitchells Vs. The Machines was Sony Pictures Animation's biggest direct-to-Netflix release before K-Pop Demon Hunters. Originally intended to premiere in theaters in 2021, the pandemic put the kibosh on that plan and the movie instead ended up coming out on Netflix. Directed and written by Gravity Falls co-creator Mike Rianda, he co-wrote this with Jeff Rowe from Disenchantment and it was produced along with Lord Miller Productions who most fans would know from The Lego Movie. Rianda intended for his film to have imagery similar to that which Sony previously did on Spider-Man: Enter The Spider-Verse as some of the animation looks CGI while merging it with graffiti art design. The best way to describe the plot is that it's National Lampoon's Vacation meets Terminator 2 as it has a troubled family have to pull together during a robot apocalypse.

The suburban family of the Mitchells consider themselves as one of worst in the neighborhood, even though their behavior is much more common than they realize. The elder sibling Katie has become popular online with her own films which are filled with memes, but her talent has earned her a spot in a California film school, so she's moving out with the rest of her family dealing with her upcoming absence, especially her father Rick who just doesn't understand digital technology. The mother Linda is savvy enough to work a smart phone, and their son Aaron is an introvert who can only express himself around Katie. Rick decides that instead of letting Katie just fly to California that the Mitchells will drive all the way to her new school which send Katie into a huge cringe. All this would make for a decent road trip movie, except a brilliant computer programmer creates a new AI system with shiny new robot assistance instead of a handheld phone. The robots rebel against their creator as the previous AI system named PAL has taken over all the robots and the entire internet launching a full-scale upheaval capturing all the humans in the world, except for the Mitchells. Now, Katie and the others need to use her quirky creative skills, Rick's technophobia, Aaron's wanting to know his fellow dinosaur-loving neighbor better, and Linda's tight devotion to her family to try and fight their way through an empire of flying laser-shooting robots to halt PAL's plans. What follows is a mad dash of movie tropes, multiple liar reveal mix-ups, and enough memes to bury every digital hub in Norway. However, the movie does manage to pull it off with a satisfying conclusion with the Mitchells learning to accept each other's differences and come together to eventually save the world in a visually spectacle that makes for a breathtaking final battle.

The Mitchells Vs. The Machines, which for a while was given the bland title of Connected, probably got lucky first premiering on streaming instead of in theaters. This is film splendidly shows how the gap between generations can simultaneously divide and strengthen a family's dynamic. The plot does expect you to just not ask any questions and enjoy the ride despite the practically transcendent leaps in logic that even an animated sci-fi comedy can make. There are plans for a sequel in the works with different writers and directors, although chances are there is enough love for the original to validate it.

Record Of Lodoss War: The First Mighty Critical Legend

Decades before Critical Role was even a thing and getting animation based on their campaigns, creators Ryo Mizuno and Hitoshi Yasuda would print out prose reproductions of former sessions of the various RPGs, mostly Dungeons And Dragons. These appeared in Yasuda’s gaming magazine, Comptiq. All the campaigns were set in the fantasy world of Forcelia which also incorporated the Sword World tabletop games. Whereas Critical Role was made up of voice actors, Mizuno's campaigns were comprised of various fans of fantasy, including sci-fi novelist Hiroshi Yamamoto. Ryo Mizuno was the Dungeon Master of these sessions, and he took the transcripts and wrote them into a series of novels titled Record Of Lodoss War indicating that this story was a recording of past campaigns. The novels became so popular that in 1990 the renowned studio Madhouse produced a 13-episode direct-to-video anime saga. This series was among the first full-length OVAs ever produced, and its completion took only two years.

Considering the anime came out over 35 years ago, Madhouse did an outstanding job that made it a timeless classic among otaku and a real starting off point for beginners. Gamers found the anime to be compatible with Dungeons And Dragons including its lore, although some outsiders might have wondered why it did not have anything to do with the American cartoon that played on Saturday mornings. Central Park Media released the anime in English as one of their first big productions first in VHS and eventually in DVD with a stellar dub. Anyone who used to watch Sci-Fi Channel back in the 90s might remember the first three episodes occasionally broadcast in a single feature, although the cryptic thing about that is the first episode is really a flash-forward already showing the main cast of characters assembled and going on a mission that begins at the end of the sixth episode making it a lead-in to the overall plot. The OVA series was based on the first four prose novels, and a manga series spinoff titled The Grey Witch.

The Lodoss franchise continued with a 26-episode anime TV series titled Chronicles Of The Heroic Knight, which retold the story from the original OVA. In between these were a trio of theatrically released anime shorts titled Welcome To Lodoss Island featuring chibi versions of the main characters which the TV series used as a bonus feature at the end of every episode.

Two other titles came from this world, one of which is Legend Of Crystania acting as a sequel to the story covered in the TV series at first in an anime movie and then a 3-episode OVA continuation. Crystania was a darker story starring two of former villains from Lodoss in a different country and finding their way in a new civilization ruled by different gods. Following this was a more humorous manga and anime titled Rune Soldier set in the same world but with a more lighthearted approach inspired by comedic fantasy anime such as Slayers.

Ryo Mizuno made a considerable number of other installments to the Lodoss saga including manga sequels and prequels, some that were parodies like the Welcome To Lodoss Island chibi adventures. Mizuno went back to the well to create a new RPG titled Record Of Grancrest War which itself received a TV anime adaptation but had no connection to the world of Forcelia. Recently, a sequel to the Lodoss saga has come out which takes place a century afterwards, one in a Castlevania-styled video game named Wonder Labyrinth, plus a series of light novels titled The Crown Of The Covenant that eventually got a manga adaptation.

Lodoss on its own is an island that separated itself from the continent of Alecrast during a civil war among the gods. Alecrast is where Rune Soldier takes place in, so Lodoss was like the continent removing all the negative aspects away from itself. Record Of Lodoss War has a consistent theme through each incarnation which consists of a party of six heroes teaming up to save their land from destruction. The first was in The Lady Of Pharis manga where the party consisted of a knight, a thief, a cleric, a wizard, a dwarf, and an elf fighting your standard issue demon lord. Following that was The Grey Witch story arc that is covered in the manga of the same name and the original OVA which is the primary cast most people are familiar with. Chronicles Of The Heroic Knight takes place a generation later with a party of six teaming up with the surviving heroes from the The Grey Witch.

The Record Of Lodoss War OVA is the best introduction to the franchise. In it, Lodoss is a land separated into various kingdoms and constantly warring with the lower island of Marmo led by the ruthless Emperor Beld who plots to take over all Lodoss. Parn is the son of a disgraced knight who sets off on a quest with his old priest friend Etoh, and they are joined by the local mage Slayn and his dwarf companion Ghim who is on a mission of his own. Later on, Deedlit, a high elf, and Woodchuck, a witty thief, accompany them on their quest to warn the kingdoms of Lodoss about Marmo's impending invasion. What most of them don’t know is that this is all a game being played the Grey Witch known as Karla who was one of the six heroes from the prequel series who has all these conflicting forces working against each other to keep Lodoss in a constant state of perpetual battles so the land will never be conquered or unified. Parn grows as a swordsman during this journey while having a clashing rivalry with the Marmo dark knight Ashram, all while Deedlit has an instant attraction for Parn even though he is over a century younger than her as an immortal elf.

Critical Role pretty much copy-pasted the Lodoss model for role-playing but differentiated itself by tailoring its campaigns for livestreaming and fits into the Dungeons And Dragons universe. Led by Matt Mercer, its cast consists of voice actors from anime and video games. From there, the campaign was made into an animated series titled The Legend Of Vox Machina for Amazon Prime, and then later the spinoff series of The Mighty Nein, both of which have become rippingly popular.

The divide between Lodoss War and the Critical Role adaptations is that Lodoss tells more of an actual story whereas Critical Role is more character focused which has a dash more diversity to it. However, the original OVA series is one of the few 90s anime that achieved the universal verdict of being priceless. The animation is just as crisp and dynamic as it ever was along with a stunning soundtrack. The cast of Lodoss have deep relationships as Parn’s journey continues and you feel the pain they share when one of their numbers dies. As high fantasy, Lodoss rings all the bells that you would find in any story set in Middle Earth as both it and Dungeons And Dragons borrowed a lot from the works of Tolkien. Vox Machina and Mighty Nein might be a more contemporary starting point for an outsider to get into fantasy, but if you’re looking for the finest animated example of the sword and sorcery genre then you need to find a portal to the otherworldly island of Lodoss.

R.I.P. Bob Burns III. Last of the ORIGINAL Ghostbusters.

 

R.I.P. Rob Reiner, "Taking it up to 11"

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Arthur Christmas

Arthur Christmas was the second fully-CGI animated movie produced by Aardman who started out as steadfast stop motion animators. DreamWorks had previously done a computer animated film with Aardman five years prior in Flushed Away which didn't perform well, but Sony Pictures contacted Aardman and created a more polished holiday-themed project, even though it also wasn't considered an immediate blockbuster. Sarah Smith did a fantastic job as director keeping up all the intricate features in this picture that she went on to do Ron's Gone Wrong. Arthur Christmas is a cinematic project with so much rewatch value because it maintains a plethora of particular details similar to an Edgar Wright movie. There are a finite number of the regular characters and an entire legion of elf helpers to remember about, so balancing them out was a difficult task. The CGI Aardman utilized is a vast improvement over what they did in Flushed Away, even though they've stuck with claymation films since then.

All set during a single Christmas, the gang from the North Pole deliver all the presents in a single night, except for one. Turns out, the title of Santa is birthright handed down from one generation of Claus to the other. The current one is Malcom who is well beyond the time he should have retired and normally leaves the actual Christmas operations to his oldest son Steve who has transformed their toy delivery into the digital age replacing the old sleigh with Star Trek-styled airship the size of a city complete with a Klingon cloaking device. Malcom's younger son Arthur is clumsy but well-meaning and in charge of receiving letters from all the children and one child in England has their Christmas wish unanswered, so Arthur and his grandfather Grandsanta who was Santa before Malcom set out in the old reindeer-driven sleigh to get the girl her bicycle. Along with an expert gift-wrapping elf, Arthur's quest causes UFO sighting from all over the world to the point that the United Nations send a drone to blow them out of the sky, although they do manage to finally drop off the present while all three generations of the Claus family putting aside their differences to nominate Arthur as the new Santa.

Arthur Christmas has slowly become a holiday favorite over the years, just not as memorable as some other recent yuletide movies like Klaus. The film stacks an entire wish list of British actors with James McAvoy as Arthur, along with Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Michael Palin, Robbie Coltrane, Joan Cusack, and Jane Horrock, although most of them play elves with high-pitched voices so it's hard to tell some of them apart. Another thing about the elves is that they are mostly indistinguishable from each other to the point where some viewers caused a panic thinking there was a same-sex kiss between two of them, keeping in mind that most fantasy tales have elves being androgynous. The primary message of this film is about a family learning to compromise in order to achieve their goals together which is what makes this a sterling family-friendly standard.

ANI-MOVIES, *Ernest & Celestine

Having nothing to do with Jim Varney, Ernest And Celestine is a Belgium/French independent animated feature-length production based on the children's book series by Gabreille Vincent. Premiering in 2012, the film managed to keep the spirit of Vincent's original illustrations while tweaking the character designs just enough to give it a slightly more anthropomorphic look. Most of the original directors previously worked on stop-motion pictures, so to have this 2D movie featuring watercolor animation done in flash gives it a distinct style. The movie was triumphant enough to be nominated for the Best Animated Oscar, only to lose to the indomitable Frozen. It also got a 52-episode TV series and a theatrical sequel. GKIDS provided an astounding roster for the English dub including Forest Whitaker, Lauren Bacall, Paul Giamatti, William H. Macy, and Jeffrey Wright which make for a catchy viewing experience. The film is slightly hampered by a short running time of 80 minutes, but considering it's based on a series of short stories the writers did manage to entrance the plot into a full-length plot.

Ernest is a lonely bear living in his solitary house in the woods away from the European town of bears which happens to have a civilization of mice underneath it. The mice have a racket going where they send the younger ones up to the surface to collect teeth from bear children acting as their version of the Tooth Fairy, which the mice use for either replacing their own teeth or for further construction of their subterranean facility. Celestine is an orphan mouse who isn't very lucky at getting teeth to earn her daily keep, so she talks Ernest into helping her rob a dentist with a stock of spare teeth. The two get in trouble with both the bear and mouse authorities and have to go on the lam to Ernest's house where the two of them become good friends and spend the winter together. Once spring comes, the bear police show up and arrest Celestine while the mice arrest Ernest. Oddly enough, both of the guilty parties manage to save the lives of the judges assigned to sentence them and end up going free to live together in harmony, even though there's still a large amount of classism between the neighboring animal societies.

Many will notice similarities between this film and Zootopia where talking animals coexist but in segregated areas. Even though the main characters are ultimately fugitives, they do grow to like each other for their creativity and make up for their mistakes thanks to a double-edged twist of fate. Ernest And Celestine is a delightful movie that is firmly family friendly that older audiences will find heartfully charming while it gives a fairly obvious salute to classic cartoon antics and a vignette that is a loving homage to Fantasia.

Fate/Stay Night: A 20-Year Retrospective

The world of Fate is probably the single most complex franchise in all of multi-media. Originally a visual novel that came out in 2004 from Type-Moon, Fate/Stay Night was adopted into the same reality which includes Tsukihime as well as The Garden Of Sinners all dreamed up by video game writer Kinoko Nasu in a continuity fans call the Nasuverse, even though there is little crossover between the various games. The game had three different paths for the player to follow, each focusing on one of a trio of love interests, the basic first route was labeled Fate. Because of the game’s success, an anime TV series was released in 2006 named after the title it came from. This was only the tip of the iceberg as the two other routes in the game got their own separate anime outings. The second route was covered in an abridged movie and a much lengthier TV series titled Unlimited Blade Works, afterwards the third and darkest route was produced into a trilogy of movies named Heaven’s Feel. There has been some major contempt between fans of the game and the various anime that came from this as to which is better.

The Fate/Stay Night timeline is complicated enough with three branching outcomes, but the addition of the prequel manga Fate/Zero which came out several years after the original story, so no matter what path you follow the prequel acts as a pseudo-prologue which isn’t fully compatible with the story of the game. This has made many fans accept Fate/Zero as the canonical lead-in the whole Fate/Stay Night continuity with Unlimited Blade Works or Heaven’s Feel as the only acceptable way to view anything of the primary video game adaptations. Putting aside that there are dozens of other Fate titles that take place in alternate timelines or parallel universes like Apocrypha, Grand Order, or Strange Fake, all of these are spinoffs or spiritual successors to the primary Stay Night game, making the original Stay Night anime series the main pillar holding up this nearly infinite multiverse.

A quick rundown of the main plot shows our young protagonist Shirou Emiya living in the Japanese mountain town of Fuyuki City who was adopted by his father Kiritsugu after an inferno burned down a large portion of the city a decade prior. What Shirou didn’t know about his departed dad is that he’s the cause of the disaster in a battle between mages called the Holy Grail War who summon heroic and villainous characters to fight on their behalf, sort of like picking your own historical figure to battle in a Pokemon match. The time of the Fifth Holy Grail war is upon them, and Shirou is caught up in the struggle with a servant of his own, a short blonde girl in an armored dress wielding an invisible sword calling herself Saber who protects Shirou from some of the psychopathic mages. One of these seven mages happens to be a girl from school named Rin with a servant of her own whose origins are covered in one of the other routes. Rin allies himself Shirou to gain the Holy Grail which can grant a single wish to the winner and their servant. Saber is revealed to be a gender-swap King Arthur who wants to redo her run on Camelot even though Shirou develops feelings for her. In the end, Shirou has Saber destroy the Grail otherwise it would cause another calamity, and Saber flashes back to near the end of her original life after her fatal clash with Mordred.

There was a retconned epilogue that showed Shirou reuniting with Saber in Avalon far off in the future, although this hasn’t been represented in an anime yet. This has driven many Fate fans to advocate a new retelling of the Stay Night route which incorporates the extra ending and flattening out the inconsistencies that Fate/Zero introduced to the lore. Therefore, a good portion of the fandom normally recommends completely skipping the 2006 series as the production by Studio DEEN didn’t have the more fluid animation that Ufotable included into their productions of the other two routes. The original Stay Night anime does contain certain intricacies and a genuine otaku charm that the other Fate anime lack, even though the primary series could have benefited from having a full 26-episode run that most other Fate titles had.

Some of Fate/Stay Night’s low points are pacing issues which do tend to meander while taking time out to drop expositions about the magical world all this takes place in, plus gives away a little more of the spoilers you would run into in the other Stay Night routes. The animation is also limited to characters giving speeches but their lips flapping offscreen to avoid movement, plus the quality picked up considerably for the fight scenes in later installments. The use of some CGI brought about the most criticism which looked as good as 3D animation was for mid-noughties’ television productions. Obviously when the fandom for the game and the first anime busted out that future anime would be given a bigger budget and higher quality which unfortunately makes the 2006 series nadir on most fans’ wish lists.

The advantages of viewing Stay Night before any other Fate titles or indeed at all are that it is simply the best place to start off in the nearly infinite Fate universes. The initial TV series carries over the style and storytelling that anime was known for after the turn of the century while simultaneously transitioning its urban fantasy setting into a more mature viewpoint. With titles like Death Note, GintamaMushishi, and Code Geass on the rise, Stay Night’s 2006 was the prime time to introduce this game-based anime during an era when visual novels weren’t as big among American otakus. There are plenty of standard cliches that would satisfy the occasional anime fan, but there is true sincerity behind Studio DEEN’s production despite the limited resources they were given. Not every anime studio can afford the unlimited budget works that Ufotable was blessed with.

Fate/Stay Night’s brightest example is the fact that out of all three routes that Fate is the lightest one. There is more slice-of-life comedy here than in the other adaptations which lead to the creation of the Today's Menu For The Emiya Family that has arguably become most every fan’s favorite series out of the entire franchise. There is a closer bond between the main characters and a deeper respect for each other as the shared alliance of surviving mages continues to grow.

A final selling point for the first TV series is that of the romance between Shirou and Saber. Shirou already had a long-established relationship with his friend Sakura as well as finding Rin attractive but became awestruck when he first summoned Saber. They share a deeper understanding of the other as opposed to when Shirou’s father was Saber’s master. Shirou views Saber as an equal and treats her like a genuine person when he refuses to hide her away from his friends and thinks of her as young woman who should be freed from the burden of her former life as the King of Britain so she can take on a new life with him. In the canonical original series finale, Shirou has to say goodbye to Saber after the Holy Grail Wars are over, but as further incarnations of Fate has shown that their shared future is still in flux either as friends or lovers. Hopefully, there will be a reckoning of this relationship as many other anime titles such as Ranma and Sailor Moon have enjoyed success in a remake, so a more fleshed out retelling of Fate/Stay Night is worthy of considering. Please check out the original version either on Blu-Ray from Sentai or on numerous streaming services.

MISC. MANGA, *Omega 6

Takaya Imamura started out as a character designer for Nintendo who worked on Star Fox, F-Zero, and Legend Of Zelda. He eventually left Nintendo and went on to create his own single-volume manga titled Omega 6 that was first printed in French. Following that, Imamura made a video game adaptation of it called Omega 6: The Triangle Stars which is in done in glorious retro-style pulp that brings back memories of Mega Man. The manga itself is a throwback to 80s cartoons and toy-based TV shows which tells a full story in a solo graphic novel.

Onboard the starship Omega 6, a pair of androids named Kyla and Thunder a brought out of suspended animation for their job as part-time bounty hunters looking for the terrorist Petrogaze. The duo get power-ups when they consume something called "magic fruit", the downside to which is that it rapidly ages them, so they have to spend their off time in a rejuvenation chamber. It's revealed later on that both of them contain the memories of a brilliant professor and his wife who left Earth centuries ago after their own world became overcrowded by aliens that colonized the planet, and they've been looking for a planet of their own to repopulate the human race. They happened to meet up with a race of planet-builders who offer them a world of their own in exchange for capturing criminals with a high price on their heads. While on their hunt, Kyla and Thunder learn that Petrograde was really a decoy for a deeper conspiracy.

Omega 6 is a steady readthrough, although there is a major flashback halfway through the book that the story gives no segue into. Takaya Imamura gives this graphic novel a dynamic look to it for both anime and video game fans even if the plot does tend to jump around. It's super-powered cyberpunk space action that will make you nostalgic for Silver Age anime.

ANI-MOVIES, *Onward

Disney's first Pixar release of 2020 came out just at the dawn of the coronavirus, so Onward already had an uphill battle trying to get anyone to dare coming out to the theaters. Monsters University director Dan Scalon headed this project that was an original story he had written with Keith Bunin and Jason Headley which took about three years to complete. The movie unfortunately didn't make any of its money back at first because of the pandemic although it has gone on to gain some accolades after it went to streaming. Onward is a low fantasy tale that mixes family values with a road trip comedy, but with eldritch beings instead of humans into a genre usually referred to as elfpunk.

In a version of our world entirely populated by enchanted creatures, magic was commonplace along with your standard dungeon quests with magic users. Somewhere along the line, this society gave up using sorcery with the rise of technology, so they replaced their magic wands for automatic garage doors. Set in modern day, young Ian Lightfoot is an elf turning sixteen even though he never knew his father who died before he was born. Ian's mother Laurel is currently dating a centaur police officer that is always on the case of his older brother Barley for being a slacker who is more interested in preserving the abandoned ways of magic and is ravenously into RPGs. It turns out Ian's father left a wizard's staff behind for them to bring him back to life for a single day. The staff is powered by a rare gem which is entirely spent conjuring up only their father from the waist on down, so Ian and Barley take a tip from a gaming manual to find a manticore who it claims to have another gem. Turns out the manticore now runs a family restaurant, but the brothers use a map meant for kids to locate the gem. Laurel gets wind of this and sets out to make sure her boys don't use the gem as it might unleash a curse. Along the way, Ian learns he can use magic with the staff which helps when he and Barley come across pixie bikers and other obstacles, only to find that their quest leads right back to the local high school. Barley finds the gem followed by the curse which takes the form of a dragon made of parts of the school building, but Laural manages to help stop it with the manticore's old sword. Unfortunately, the remainder of their father's time is about spent, and Ian is stuck under some debris making Barley the only one who gets to say goodbye to their fully corporeal father before he disappears. Barley relays his father's love to Ian and they help people get interested in magic again.

Onward is up to scratch as far as Pixar movies go, at least that far as not being one of their gratuitous sequels. There doesn't seem to be as much love for this film that most generic Disney fanatics have so for some of their other releases, but having it come out just at the start of pandemic lockdown really put people in a bad mood which affected the movie's overall outcome. The animation and lush backdrops are picturesque, although Pixar didn't appear to put as much effort into this like some of the other visual masterpieces like Up or The Incredibles. The premise for this might have made for a reasonable series on streaming because the standard feature length doesn't do this urban fantasy world enough justice.